Birthdays, birthdays

Today is A's birthday! Two weeks ago was mine and in another two weeks it will be T's. We are on the down hill side of summer. It's been great! Full of bike riding, lunch and crafts in the park, swim lessons and hanging out in the sun. I'm excited for the camping trips we have coming up at the end of August.

I tried a couple of weeks ago to post a pic of T on the treadmill, hooked up to the EKG machine at his cardiologist appt, but I couldn't get blogger to accept the photo. He looked very "robotical" He did a great job on the treadmill and his performance was in the 50th percentile for kids with normal heart function. Great Job! The bad news is that the Dr. thinks it's time to replace his damaged valve. He'll have the Ross Procedure sometime early next year (so we can beef up our medical insurance). Since he's so young he won't have a mechanical valve--they require the patient remain on blood thinners for the rest of their lives. We knew that some day he would have to have this surgery, we were just hoping that he would be bigger. It's a common procedure and has uniformly good results. Our doctor has done it TONS of times all over the world. He's very well respected in the pediatric cardiology community and it doesn't hurt that he looks like Mr. Noodle*! OK, bath time for boys!

* while looking for a photo to post I learned that the actor who played Mr. Noodle died! what a shame, but it is creepy how much he looks like our dr.